It's an iPhone World -- We Just Live In It

King of the iPods

iPhone OS 3.0 adds more bells and whistles to Apple's most full-featured music player.

Apple didn’t forget that its flashy smartphone is an iPod too. And iPhone OS 3.0 makes it easier to navigate content you already own--as well as to easily buy more, of course, as Steve Jobs intended.

As we’ve said, Spotlight lets you search for and play songs and videos without even launching the iPod app. This works well, but Spotlight’s search results don’t include the names of playlists. And if you type the name of an album, you get a list of the album’s tracks in random order. Luckily, the enhanced search function within the iPod application offers finer control. You can search for playlists, and if you search for an album title, you’ll see the entire album up top, followed by an alphabetical list of its tracks.

The iTunes Store lets you redeem iTunes gift cards right from the phone.

Once a track is playing, skipping to the exact part you want is a snap, thanks to the new scrubber bar. To use it, hold your finger down on the playhead that appears on the song’s progress bar. While you’re holding the playhead, the words “High-Speed Scrubbing” appear above the progress bar, and you can slide your finger left or right to scrub through the track quickly. For slower scrubbing, slide your finger down the screen and watch the words change to Half-Speed Scrubbing, Quarter-Speed Scrubbing, and Fine Scrubbing, which is second-by-second control. Once you see the option you want, slide your finger left or right to scrub through the track. This is awesome for podcasts and audiobooks, but works on any selection, audio or video.

You can buy or rent movies from your iPhone, but the selection is much smaller than what's offered on your Mac.

The Now Playing screen has extra buttons when you’re listening to a podcast or audiobook. Tap the button on the right to set the playback speed to 2X (which is technically closer to 1.5X, but doesn’t change the pitch or make the people speaking sound like Chipmunks), slower 1/2X, or real-time 1X. The super-handy center button jumps back 30 seconds--we call it the “Say What?!” button. And over to the left is a button to email a link to the podcast to a friend, but the button only appears when you’re listening to a podcast, not an audiobook.

New parental controls let you limit what kinds of content can be brought and viewed.

OS 3.0 finally enables Stereo Bluetooth (aka A2DP), letting you pair a set of Bluetooth headphones to the phone and listen to your music in stereo, without wires. We tested this with Wi-Gear’s iMuffs MB220 and enjoyed clear stereo sound without needing the iMuffs’ included dongle. Stereo Bluetooth isn’t supported on the first-gen iPhone or the first-gen iPod touch, which is lame.

Oh, and now you can shake your iPhone to turn on Shuffle, but it requires quite a violent and sustained shake on an iPhone 3G, rendering the feature more gimmicky than useful. The iPhone 3GS, on the other hand (see our review below), is highly susceptible to very slight movement, to the point where being jostled on the subway by another passenger while holding your phone could shuffle the playlist you’re listening to.

Three new buttons for podcasts: Email the podcast's link, jump back 30 seconds, and change the playback speed.

The iTunes Store app no longer needs Wi-Fi--you can browse using a 3G or EDGE connection and download purchases of less than 10MB (think songs, not videos). The store now includes movies to buy or rent, plus TV shows to buy, although with a much smaller selection than what’s available on your Mac. You can grab college lectures from iTunes U too (see “What I Learned at iTunes U”). Additional parental-control options found in Settings > General > Restrictions let parents limit what kind of content kids can buy or view on the phone.

Far more shows are available in the main iTunes Store on your Mac than in the smaller iTunes Store on your iPhone.

What’s still missing? We’d love it if our podcasts auto-updated on the phone the same way they do in iTunes on our Mac. We want the option to delete music and videos right from the phone, in case we want to rent a movie on the go and need to free up a little space. Taking the podcast-recommendation function a step further, how about the ability to email playlists? And in the iTunes Store, a Save For Later button would rock, for tagging interesting-looking content without purchasing it right away.